Holding on to the Air

Suzanne Farrell joined the New York City Ballet in 1961 and went on to become one of George Balanchine's most celebrated muses. By the time she retired from performing in 1989, she had achieved a career without precedent in the history of ballet. She danced over one hundred ballets, a third of which were composed expressly for her by Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, and Maurice Bejart, including masterpieces in which the limits of ballet technique were expanded to a degree not seen before. As a repetiteur for the George Balanchine Trust, she has staged Balanchine ballets for companies throughout the United States, as well as for the Royal Danish Ballet, the Kirov Ballet, and the Bolshoi Ballet. In 1999 she staged a week-long season of Balanchine for the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., which led to the creation of the Suzanne Farrell Ballet as an ongoing partnership with the Center. Farrell joined the faculty of the Department of Dance at Florida State University as a Francis Eppes Professor in 2000. She is the recipient of honorary degrees from several universities, including Yale, Georgetown, and Notre Dame.